MONTREAL — Paranoia and insecurity have served Jeff Gandell well — as those states of mind do for many playwrights.

Gandell’s fear of losing his hair before his virginity resulted in The Balding, a brutally honest and hilarious confessional that was nominated for best comedy honours at last year’s Fringe fest.

For The Balding, Gandell had to travel about 15 years back in time, to when he was a neurotic 20-year-old.

More time-travelling beckons in his latest, Danger Unit, which begins its Fringe run Thursday at Théâtre Sainte Catherine. In this solo piece, ably directed by Paul Hawkins, he recalls his life as an angst-riddled 10-year-old.

And once again, Gandell should leave audiences howling as he relives his formative years, which were filled mostly with fear. Fear of everything from AIDS to tampered Tylenol, airplane crashes to carbon-monoxide poisoning, snapping jellyfish to killer bees. Gandell should also leave audiences feeling his pain about trying to come to terms with a world where horrors abound for an impressionable, once-hopeful elementary-school student.

As he did for The Balding, Gandell has written a couple of original compositions, which he unabashedly croons — unconcerned about whether or not he hits the right notes. It’s the lyrics that matter most. And the words to the amusingly melancholic End of the World give audiences an excellent glimpse into the troubled mind of young Jeff.

The action begins in the cedar-closet attic of Gandell’s family home. Lifshitz, the most popular kid in his Grade 6 class, is explaining to the mystified Gandell how sex works. Fair enough, but later Gandell watches the oracle that is Dan Rather on the news, and learns that a fatal new disease called AIDS is sweeping the country and that it is caused by sexual contact.

So when Gandell gets bitten in his nether regions by a jellyfish while swimming in the ocean during a family vacation in Florida, he naturally assumes this contact is sexual and that he has been afflicted with AIDS.

Gandell’s world gets increasingly dark after he takes in the latest worrisome news from Rather, about Tylenol tampering and worse. But rather than sit back and await his fate, he decides to take a stand.

Taking his cue from such TV shows as The A-Team, he forms — yes — Danger Unit, a crime-fighting gang with Lifshitz and a few other chums. What they lack in physical prowess — which is pretty much everything — they more than compensate for with their raving fantasies.

Danger Unit is a worthy followup to The Balding and offers further proof that Gandell is well on his way to morphing into Montreal’s answer to late, great New York monologist/writer Spalding Gray.

The fear, though, is where he can go for his next traipse back in time, in search of more paranoia and insecurity.

“Back to the womb, I guess,” cracks Gandell, following his pre-Fringe performance of Danger Unit at the Montreal Improv Theatre.

Gandell traces his neuroses back to his religious roots. “Starting in elementary school, you learn about a lot of stories about people trying to get rid of the Jews,” he says. “I think that’s kind of inbred in the Jewish neuroses.”

He takes these fears to a whole other level in Danger Unit. But he insists the phobias he brings to the surface here actually tormented him as a 10-year-old.

“When I was a kid, I really was quite scared of all these things I heard about on the news. I think the ’80s were a particularly scary time. I was actually 6 when I started hearing about AIDS when it first came out. And it was the end of the world. It seemed like such a dark and bleak future.”

Even the part in which Gandell gets bitten by a jellyfish is fact-based, although he concedes he didn’t think he might have contracted AIDS as a consequence.

The business about someone tampering with Tylenol isn’t a stretch, either. In 1982, there were deaths reported in Chicago as a result of someone mixing potassium cyanide into Tylenol packages. The culprit was never caught.

“And I switched over to Advil. I find it more effective,” notes Gandell, an English prof by day at Dawson College.

Funny guy. Obviously, Gandell hails from the school of dark comedy.

“I don’t know whether it’s comedy or tragedy or somewhere in the middle,” he says. “Mostly, I see my work as simply genuine. I never try to be funny. Trying to be funny is really the death of comedy. That’s why standup is so hard. I did standup, but I prefer theatre, because I don’t have to be funny every 10 seconds.

“I never write something because I think it’s going to kill. I go more for the honesty. I think that’s where comedy really comes from, with people being able to relate to it and laugh about it. But it can even be more satisfying getting an ‘aw’ than a laugh from an audience. It’s really about emotionally touching an audience.”

Following Danger Unit’s run at the Fringe, Gandell will be bringing The Balding on the road, to Fringe fests in Regina, Winnipeg and Calgary. And if Danger Unit strikes a chord with audiences here, he’ll reprise the play at Fringes across the country next year.

Although comfortable alone on stage, Gandell is contemplating writing and performing in an ensemble for his next project. “I might even bring Lifshitz to life through another actor,” he quips. “But the point is that I can perform with others on stage. I’ve done a fair amount of improv with others here.”

The angst will remain a constant, whether Gandell goes solo or shares the stage.

Danger Unit plays at Théâtre Sainte Catherine, 264 Ste-Catherine St. E., as part of the Montreal Fringe Festival. Showtimes are Thursday, June 12 at 7:15 p.m., Saturday, June 14 at 10:45 p.m., Sunday, June 15 at 9 p.m., Tuesday, June 17 at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, June 19 at 7:15 p.m., Friday, June 20 at 10:45 p.m., Saturday, June 21 at 3:45 p.m. and Sunday, June 22 at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $10; $8 for students, seniors and QDF members. For reservations for this and other Fringe productions, call 514-849-FEST or visit montrealfringe.ca.

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